Same Tomato, ₪2.90 or ₪8.90: The One Aisle Our Own Price Index Can't See

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-07-23 · 6 min read

-11% — Keshet Ta'amim's rank on Superclear's own chain-priciness index (25th of 33, "very cheap") as of July 2026 — in the very months an independent survey found it Israel's most expensive chain for fresh produce, with a basket 37% pricier than Rami Levy's

This summer brought Israeli shoppers a rare piece of good news: vegetable and fruit prices crashed. Watermelon that opened the season at ₪9/kg is now selling for ₪1.9-2.9; cucumber and tomato dropped to ₪2.9/kg at many chains (Ynet, June 23 2026). Even premium Pink Lady apples fell at one chain from ₪17.9 to ₪9.9. After years of cost-of-living headlines, it felt like a genuine break.

But six weeks earlier, an independent survey told a very different story — and Superclear couldn't confirm it with our own data. Not because it's wrong. Because the data our index is built from simply can't answer that question.

The survey: the same tomato, a 207% gap

On April 30, 2026, the Institute for Retail Research, led by Dr. Hezi Gur Mizrahi, priced 58 fruit and vegetable items across 10 chains — Rami Levy, Osher Ad, Yohananof, Carrefour Hyper, Victory, Shufersal Deal, Freshmarket, Shuk HaIr, Keshet Ta'amim and Machsanei HaShuk. The findings ran in Maariv and Walla Finance on May 3, 2026.

The cheapest basket, at Rami Levy, came to ₪418.15. The most expensive, at Keshet Ta'amim, came to ₪573.12 — a 37% gap, about ₪155 on the exact same 58 items (Maariv). Individual products showed even sharper gaps: tomatoes and cucumbers at ₪2.90 at Rami Levy versus ₪8.90 at Shufersal Deal — a 207% difference. Artichokes at ₪4.90 at Shuk HaIr versus ₪16.90 at Keshet Ta'amim — 245%. Blueberries at ₪9.90 versus ₪29.90 — 202% (Walla Finance). These weren't outliers — they were gaps in the 200%-245% range on entirely basic products.

This is exactly the kind of gap Superclear exists to expose. So we tried.

Why Superclear can't compare tomato against tomato

To check the gap ourselves, we searched our own database for "tomato" — the same database that lets us find an identical can of coffee selling for ₪8.30 in one place and ₪14.90 in another, or an identical ice-cream tub selling for ₪9.90 at one branch of a chain and nearly ₪28 at another branch of the exact same chain.

With tomatoes, it barely worked. We found roughly 20 different product codes all named "tomato" — and nearly every one belonged to a single chain. One code belongs exclusively to Rami Levy and appears at 94 of its stores, priced anywhere from ₪1.50 to ₪6.90 — on the same day, within the same chain. Another code belongs exclusively to Yohananof. Almost no code crosses between competing chains at a sample size worth trusting — except one case that actually confirms the picture: a cherry-tomato pack code appears at 71 stores across two different chains at once — ₪24.90-32.90 across Super Yuda's 26 stores, versus ₪9.90-19.90 across Freshmarket's 45. A gap of up to 232% at the extremes, close to what the May survey found for loose vegetables. We checked watermelon too: one code belongs only to Tiv Taam (53 stores, ₪3.90-5.90), another is shared only by AM:PM and Dor Alon — two gas-station convenience chains that are corporately linked, not rival chains.

The reason is simple: Israel's price-transparency regulations, like the country's whole retail barcode system, were built around packaged goods carrying a shared barcode (GS1) — a box of pasta, a can of coffee, a tub of ice cream. A vegetable or fruit sold by weight has no shared barcode across chains. Each chain invents its own internal code. Which means in exactly the category with the sharpest gaps, the mechanism that lets consumers — and us — compare real prices simply stops working.

What we could check

We couldn't compare tomato against tomato, but we could check something else: how does Keshet Ta'amim, the chain flagged as Israel's most expensive for produce, rank on Superclear's general priciness index — the one built from thousands of barcoded packaged products, and the one we use in every other story on this site?

The answer: as of July 2026, Keshet Ta'amim ranks 25th of 33 chains — 11% below the median, labeled "very cheap." Rami Levy, the cheapest chain in the produce survey, also ranks "very cheap" on our index — 29th, -14%. That's consistent. Keshet Ta'amim isn't: on packaged goods it looks like a budget chain. On fruits and vegetables, per an independent survey run in the very same weeks, it was the most expensive chain in Israel.

There's a second hint in our own data: on Superclear's internal price-inequality index — how much prices vary store-to-store within the same chain — Keshet Ta'amim ranks 5th of 33, with a 27% spread between its cheapest and priciest branches. Even on the products we can measure, it's already known for being unusually inconsistent.

The other blind spot: boutique shops

The gap doesn't stop at the big chains. A second Institute for Retail Research survey, published by Walla Finance on June 10, 2026, compared 19 summer fruit items across six supermarket chains and five boutique produce shops that also sell online. The cheapest fruit basket, at Victory, came to ₪243.30. The most expensive, at a boutique shop, came to ₪527.10 — a 116% gap. Melon selling for ₪2.90 at Carrefour cost ₪15.90 at the boutique shop — 5.5 times more. Apricots at ₪9.90 in the supermarket cost ₪49.90 at the specialty shop — 5 times more (Walla Finance). Same pattern exactly: an entire retail channel with no footprint in the transparency data, so neither we nor any other automated tool has an easy way to watch it.

The bottom line

The June 2026 produce-price crash is real, driven by a mix of oversupply, a currency rate that makes exports harder, and international tensions blocking markets (Ynet). But a national average crash says nothing about whether the chain-to-chain gaps — 200%+ per the May survey — actually closed. No survey has re-run the same 58-item basket since, and we can't check it ourselves either, for the reason explained above.

The pattern isn't new: back at Passover 2026, Walla Finance reported tomato prices ranging from roughly ₪0.90-1.00 at the big chains to ₪28.90 at a boutique shop — a 32-fold gap (Walla Finance). Produce is inherently volatile — even within a single chain, as we saw with Rami Levy (₪1.50-6.90, same day, 94 stores). But that kind of internal volatility doesn't explain a sustained two-and-a-half-times-or-more gap between chains, on the same day, for the same product, in one survey that checked them all at once.

The thing worth remembering the next time you're buying vegetables: Superclear's ranking, like every automated price comparison in Israel, is built from what the law requires chains to publish by barcode. That covers a box of pasta beautifully. It doesn't cover a tomato. And in that exact category — per the two independent surveys we checked — the gaps are among the widest we've found in anything we've ever surveyed. Keep that in mind next time you're standing at the tomato pile.

Sources